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The Leetcode Trap: Why Solving 1000 Problems Won’t Make You a Real Problem Solver
If You’ve Solved 1000 Problems and Still Struggle, Here’s Why
You’ve been lied to.
Everyone says, “Grind 200–500 Leetcode problems before your interview.”
Everyone follows this mindless formula — because it works, right?
Wrong.
Because if you need to solve 500+ problems just to feel “ready,” let’s be brutally honest: you’re not a real problem solver.
You’re a pattern matcher.
And the moment an interviewer throws an unseen and unique problem at you, you freeze. Your brain panics. You have no clue what to do — because you never actually learned problem-solving. You just memorized patterns and prayed they’d show up again.
This is why so many smart engineers bomb interviews.
It’s not that they aren’t good at coding.
It’s that they’ve been training the wrong way.
This post will show you how to train like a real problem solver.
Not a Leetcode bot.
Not a brute-force grinder.
But an engineer who can think through any problem — even if they’ve never seen it before.
